Do parking requirements significantly increase the area dedicated to parking? A test of the effect of parking requirements values in Los Angeles County

Minimum parking requirements (MPRs) are the norm for urban and suburban development in the United States (Davidson et al., 2002). The justification for MPRs is that overflow parking will occupy nearby street or off-street parking. Shoup (1999a) and Willson (1995) provide cases where there is reason to believe that parking space requirements have forced parcel developers to place more parking than they would in the absence of parking requirements. However, to our knowledge the existing literature does not test the effect of parking minimums on the amount of lot space devoted to parking beyond a few case studies. This paper tests the hypothesis that MPRs bind for most land uses using data on suburban office, commercial, industrial and retail property sales from Los Angeles County using both direct and indirect approaches. Our indirect test of the effects of parking requirements is similar to the one used by Glaeser and Gyourko (2003). A simple theoretical model shows that the marginal value of additional parking to the sale price of a building should be equal to the cost of land plus the cost of parking construction. We estimate the marginal values of parking and lot area with spatial methods using a large data set from the Los Angeles area non-residential property sales and find that for most of the property types the marginal value of parking is significantly below that of the parcel area. In addition, we directly examine required and supplied parking and find that on average parking supplied is quite close to the required amount.     

Analysis of the effectiveness of control measures to mitigate road dust emissions in a regional network

The effectiveness of control measures to reduce road dust emissions is analyzed using a year’s data of road dust emissions collected with a mobile sampling platform and a survey of road maintenance practices in the Lake Tahoe Basin of Nevada and California US. Attributes such as sweeping practices, anti-icing, shoulder improvement, pavement condition, trackout, and abrasive material from road segments were analyzed with a feature subset selection algorithm. Street sweeping was found to be an effective means of controlling dust emissions from roads. Road dust from dirty tertiary roads served as a continuous source of suspendable material for adjacent high-speed roads in the winter time. To be most effective, emission control strategies require that not only primary roads, but all roads be swept after snow storms to recover applied abrasive material.     

隧道照明节能控制系统研究

综合考虑交通量、环境亮度、行车速度、地理环境等因素,基于隧道照明设计与控制的"全局优化"理念,采用"多模式、多等级、智能化、个性化"的控制策略,开发了能够根据公路隧道内外亮度、照度、车流量、车流特点等环境变换因素,自动进行反馈调整隧道内部照明的智能照明控制系统。估算比对同一隧道在使用节能智能控制系统前后年总能耗可知,与原有控制方案相比,节能智能控制系统综合节电30%。     

Alternative fuels for transportation

The alternatives to the oil based fuels for transportation are considered and analysed. These are the synthetic fuels, made from coal, the liquid petroleum gases of propane and butane, compressed natural gas and methanol. The problems associated with the use of electric vehicles are discussed; the main problem being that of range.

The possible use of hydrogen as a fuel is analysed in some detail. Since its supply can be tied directly to nuclear energy sources, rather than hydrocarbon feed stocks, it could be an alternative in the long term. The main problems of the storage of hydrogen on the vehicle and of its propensity to “back‐fire” into the engine intake are discussed. The first can be ameliorated and the second eliminated by dual fuelling; with petrol. It is advocated that the on‐board storage of hydrogen be by the use of hydrides for private cars. However, it is expected that it may be as liquid hydrogen for some forms of transport and will certainly be in this form for aircraft.     

Dynamics of LRT growth: Karlsruhe since 1975

The public transport system of Karlsruhe, in particular its innovative services on jointly used heavy rail lines, has received substantial attention throughout the past 20 years. The discussion of the system and of its development has been rather limited in the past, mostly highlighting technical aspects. This paper provides an overview of the development, including the urban development, of the region and of the funding system. The ridership and financial development of the operator is documented in detail. Three case studies focus on the integration of the system development in the general political process of the region and demonstrate the limitations of the operator under its current ownership structures.     

Design and evaluation of an integrated inventory and transportation system

This paper proposes the adoption of an integrated inventory and transportation system (IITS) to minimize the total costs of inventory and transportation. A non-linear programing is developed by analyzing transportation and inventory costs with one supplier and many retailers in the distribution environment. The paper compares the proposed model with the traditional approach in computing total costs with numerical data. The results indicate that the total costs can be optimized by adopting integrated programing rather than the traditional approach, along with achieving improved customer service levels. In particular, sensitivity analysis is applied to determine the performance of the IITS under various transportation costs, holding costs and shortage costs. It shows that the transportation cost per unit is most sensitive in the proposed model. In this situation, the IITS is more effective for cost saving when set-up cost, holding and shortage costs are high, but is less effective for situations involving high per-unit transportation costs.     

基于动力松弛原理的地下隧道工程初始应力场计算方法研究

文章基于动力松弛法原理,研究了显式动力算法在对隧道工程进行初始应力场计算中的应用.通过与隐式算法的比较计算,指出该方法在并行计算环境下,无论在计算收敛性还是在对计算环境的依赖性等方面均有较大优势,特别适用于地下隧道工程等中、大规模计算模型的初始应力场计算.     

侧部高压富水溶腔与隧道间岩柱安全厚度的研究

岩溶区隧道周围不可避免地存在一些中小规模的隐伏溶洞,由于隧道的开挖、卸荷改变了隧道与溶洞间岩柱的应力状态,溶洞中的高压岩溶水进一步恶化了其稳定性,造成隧道突水、突泥等岩溶灾害的发生,带来了重大安全危害和经济损失.成为岩溶地区隧道施工中亟待解决的重要问题.除施工扰动、高水压作用外,隧道与溶洞间岩柱厚度不足是引起这一工程问题的主要因素,建立隧道与溶洞间岩柱安全厚度预测模型具有重要的理论意义和重大的工程实用价值.针对常见的中、小尺度的侧部高压富水溶腔,综合考虑安全厚度的影响因素,以隧道周围的塑性区和溶洞周围的高渗透带的贯通与否作为中间岩柱稳定的判断标准,建立了中间岩柱安全厚度力学预测模型,在此基础上分析了各因素对最小安全厚度的影响规律.以忠垫高速公路岩溶隧道为例,利用最小安全厚度预测公式判断中间岩柱的稳定性,其结果同基于现场量测判断的结果一致,从而说明上述方法具有一定的可行性.     

A new approach for improving the performance of freight train timetabling of a single-track railway system

A new approach for improving the performance of freight train timetabling for single-track railways is proposed. Using the idea of a fixed-block signaling system, we develop a matrix representation to express the occupation of inter- and intra-station tracks by trains illustrating the train blocking time diagram in its entirety. Train departure times, dwell times, and unnecessary stopping are adjusted to reduce average train travel time and single train travel time. Conflicts between successive stations and within stations are identified and solved. A fuzzy logic system is further used to adjust the range of train departure times and checks are made to determine whether dwell times and time intervals can be adjusted for passenger and freight trains at congested stations to minimize train waiting times. By combining manual scheduling expertise with the fuzzy inference method, timetable efficiency is significantly improved and becomes more flexible.